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10 Dec 2016 12:13:19pm

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Scruton sees a great contrast between humanism and technology, but I don't.

Scruton writes nonsense: "Brain imaging won't help you to analyse Bach's Art of Fugue or to interpret King Lear any more than it will unravel the concept of legal responsibility or deliver a proof of Goldbach's conjecture; it won't help you to understand the concept of God or to evaluate the proofs for His existence, nor will it show you why justice is a virtue and cowardice a vice............ The invention of "neurolaw" is, it seems to me, profoundly dangerous, since it cannot fail to abolish freedom and accountability - not because those things don't exist, but because they will never crop up in a brain scan".

But surely neuroscience is hoping one day to be able to “read people’s thoughts”. A transcription of these thoughts will presumably be able to include words such as “freedom” and “accountability”.

There are no doubt rabid "artificial intelligence" writers with views equally extreme as Scruton's. Perhaps he has formed his views in reaction to their's.